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Kurt Vonnegut’s Novel Cat’s Cradle: Science Fiction, Thought, and Ethics

Mark Wekander Voigt General Studies Faculty, University of Puerto Rico, Río Piedras San Juan, Puerto Rico [email protected] Abstract

The ethical message of Kurt Vonnegut‟s novel Cat’s Cradle has often been missed by critics who see the

novel as infantile satire and not as an analysis of beliefs that prevent us from developing an ethical

perspective. The paper focuses on Vonnegut‟s criticism of the belief that science is beyond normal

understanding, its emphasis on causal order which leads to determinism, and the deification of science as

pure knowledge. As Vonnegut‟s novel points out, these attitudes eliminate the possibility for ethical

judgment.

Keywords: Cat‟s Cradle, pure knowledge, religion, science, Gaia.

Resumen

Muchas veces el mensaje ético de la novela Cat’s Cradle, escrito por Kurt Vonnegut, no ha sido

capturado por los crítico, quienes ven la novela como un sátira infantil y no se percata de crítica sobre

las creencias que obstaculizan el desarrollo de una perspectiva ética. Este trabajo hace hincapié en la

crítica de la ciencia moderna por su mistificación, su énfasis en un orden causal, la cual está relacionada

con el determinismo, y la deificación de la ciencia como conocimiento puro. Como nos enseña la novela

de Vonnegut, estas tres posturas sobre la ciencia eliminan la posibilidad de una evaluación ética.

Palabras Claves: Cat‟s Cradle, conocimiento puro, religión, ciencia, Gaia.

The New York Review of Books has long had standing as a liberal intellectual

publication. Consistently, it has criticized the novels of Kurt Vonnegut. In his 1973

review, Michael Wood (1973) concluded that:

“The novels themselves are not sticky nets of human futility but means of

escaping from such nets. Cat’s Cradle is built around a jaunty, hip, fatalistic

gospel delivered mainly in calypsos, and based on the principle that everything

that happens has to happen; that a conflict between good and evil, if properly,

skeptically staged, is a fine, constructive fiction. It keeps people busy, takes their

minds off their moral and economic misery.”

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Other reviewers in the New York Review of Books reach similar conclusions

about Vonnegut‟s opus. Jack Richardson(1970), called Vonnegut “a soft, sentimental

satirist… a popularizer of naughty whimsy, a compiler of easy-to-read truisms about

society who allows everyone's heart to be in the right place.” Articles about Vonnegut‟s

work in the journal bear titles such as “Mod Apostle” and “Easy Writer,” making

reference to mad apostle and the movie Easy Rider.

Looking further on the Internet, it is easy to conclude that many of Vonnegut‟s

fans share this same concept of his work. His parody of a modern invented religion that

will make everyone happy spawns websites for this “jaunty, hip, fatalistic gospel

delivered mainly in calypsos.” This religion, Bokononism, has generated more interest

than the book Cat’s Cradle itself. But The Books of Bokonon are lies mixed with truth.

The first sentence in the Books of Bokonon is a version of Epimenides Paradox.

Epimenides, who was a Cretan, said that Cretans always lie. So therefore he must be

lying when he says that Cretans always lie. There seems to be no way out of this

linguistic maze. The first line of The Books of Bokonon is “All the true things I am about

to tell you are shameless lies.” In a sense, the statement is existentialist. Faced with a

world without meaning, we are forced to make our own. We are not limited to the

meaning we give our lives, but as Vonnegut states as a preface to the novel, quoting a

verse from The Books of Bokonon. Nothing in this book is true. “Live by the foma* that

make you brave and kind and healthy and happy.” (Vonnegut, 1998) A footnote defines

foma as “harmless untruths.” The meaning we should give our lives should make us

better people.

Vonnegut‟s ethical message was lost on the intellectuals of the New York Review

of Books because of its humor and deceptive simplicity. His irony was lost on his

younger audience because they focused on his irreverence. But in part his style and

irreverence are part of his message. Cat’s Cradle is essentially about the moral issues

involved in a democratic government using the atomic bomb and how to be really

ethical, to think about right and wrong, means that we must dispense with the

authorities who tell us what is right and wrong.

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The most popular book about the dropping

of the bomb on Hiroshima was John Hersey‟s

1946 book Hiroshima, first published as a

complete issue of the New Yorker magazine.

Cat’s Cradle style comments on John Hersey‟s

book, which uses all the tricks of the novel: irony,

cliffhangers, suspense, understatement, drama,

vivid descriptions, heroes and heroines. Hersey

follows the lives of six survivors of the bombing of

Hiroshima from the night before the bomb was

dropped to several months later. He switches

back and forth from story to story, interspersing

information, describing their emotions and

struggles. In other words, it has all the

entertainment of a well-written novel.

On the first page of Cat’s Cradle, its narrator explains, that when he was younger

he “collected material for a book to be called The Day the World Ended.” The book was

to be “factual” and tell what “important Americans had done on the day when the first

atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, Japan”(Vonnegut, 1998, p. 1). This is a clear

reference to John Hersey‟s book. But Vonnegut is also making a point: to discuss the

ethical implications of dropping the bomb on Hiroshima, one should not look at the

victims, but at those who were involved in developing such a bomb and their

government. Also facts and history books have a type of deterministic force. History‟s

emphasis on the causal relationship of events conveys a sense of inevitability.

In reaction to Hersey, whose point of view is an omniscient third person,

Vonnegut writes what might be called an anti-novel. He undermines suspense. He

creates cartoon characters. He has an unreliable narrator who admits that he is telling

his story from the point of view of his religion.

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The novel also seems to lack seriousness and purpose. The chapter titles are

overstatements, haphazard lines or subtle ironies that refer to a small section of the

text. The title of chapter 102 is “Enemies of Freedom” and it refers to “targets (that)

were cardboard cut-outs shaped like men.” The cut-outs have the names of Hitler,

Mussolini, Karl Marx, Kaiser Wilhelm, Fidel Castro, and Mao. The arms display, in which

they will be attacked by fighter planes, is on the fictitious Caribbean island of San

Lorenzo, which is a dictatorship. In part, the meaningless chapter-names are an attack

on the use of language to hide motives, to dupe the people, to create meanings that are

not going to make people “happy and kind.” The short novel has 127 chapters, the last

one titled “The End,” so it seems more like a pastiche than a novel.

Vonnegut has an important predecessor for his

method of distancing readers in Bertold Brecht‟s epic

theater. Brecht agreed with Aristotle that the catharsis of

tragedy is an emotional cleansing. But to Brecht, this

meant that our intellect has shut down. In Hersey‟s book

we share the desperate, hectic, overwhelming and

numbing feelings that the characters experienced as

victims of the bomb and we are carried along by the

story. On the other hand, Vonnegut and Brecht seek

distance so our minds and not our emotions are involved.

We look at the situation and do not confuse ourselves

with pity and emotion or leave somehow refreshed after

having a good cry.

The narrator and fictitious writer of Cat’s Cradle is a fool whose moral outrage

seems to be awakened only at the end of the story he is telling. The villains are quirky

and banal. There is no dramatic tug of war between good and evil. The text seems

simple, almost childish at times. But almost every line is ironic. Unfortunately, many fans

and critics missed his most serious irony, which deals with ethical behavior.

Mark Wekander Voigt

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The original title of this paper was “Kurt Vonnegut‟s Novel Cat’s Cradle: “Science

Fiction, Thought, and Ethics.” Perhaps it would be better to say “Science‟s Fiction.” In a

sense science is fiction. Thomas Kuhn‟s The Stucture of Scientific Revolution was not

the first work to point this out. Science is another existential attempt to make meaning

out of meaninglessness. “In his Rothschild Lecture at Harvard in 1992, Kuhn remarked

that it is hard to imagine what can be meant by the phrase that a scientific theory takes

us “closer to the truth”(Weinberg,2007). It invents explanations or fictions for empirical

data. As our fictitious writer Jonah says, quoting Bokonon, “All the true things are

shameless lies.” (Vonnegut,1998)

For those of you who have not read Cat’s Cradle or read it recently, here is a

summary.

Cat’s Cradle tells the story of Felix Hoenniker, one of the fathers of the atomic

bomb and his new invention ice-nine, which brings the end of earth as a functioning

ecosystem, leaving instead an inert surface and ravaging tornadoes in the sky. The

story follows a writer who begins a book on what famous Americans were doing on the

day the bomb was dropped on Hiroshima. Through his investigation, he makes contact

with the orphaned children of Felix Hoenikker: Newt, a midget and college dropout and

Angela, a gawky horse-faced woman married to a handsome philandering arms

manufacturer. The third child Frank is a refugee from justice. Hoenikker‟s children,

unbeknownst to the writer, possess a seed of the crystal ice-nine, which if released into

a body of water, will result in the water of the world freezing, since its melting point is

114.4 degrees.

The writer, who tells us to call him Jonah, though his real name is John,goes to

the Caribbean island of San Lorenzo to work on a story and also drawn by a photograph

he saw in the newspaper of Mona Aamons Monzano, the adopted daughter of the

dictator, Papa Monzano. On the plane, he meets Newt and Angela, who are on their

way to Frank‟s wedding where he is to marry Mona. Frank has received the title of

Major General, Minister of Science and Progress. Jonah eventually learns that the three

have used their chip of ice nine. Newt has a short affair with a Russian circus midget

Kurt Vonnegut‟s Novel Cat’s Cradle: Science Fiction, Thought, and Ethics

259

who is really a spy. Angela has used her chip to buy her philandering good lucking

husband. Frank has given his to Papa Monzano, the dictator of Haiti-like Republic of

San Lorenzo in exchange for his appointment.

When Papa Monzano is dying in horrible pain, he takes ice-nine and kills himself.

Jonah, the writer of the story, goes with Frank, Angela and Newt to clean up the mess.

Besides the frozen body of Monzano is the body of his doctor, who had frozen when he

tried to taste ice-nine and then fell to the floor. They clean up the mess and plan to burn

Monzano‟s body. Before they can burn the body, a pilot, who has been performing for

the celebration of the One Hundred Martyrs for Freedom, crashes into the palace with

his burning plane and Monzano‟s body slips into the ocean and all the water of the

world becomes frozen and the world turns into a desert and the sky fills with tornadoes.

Cat’s Cradle uses ice-nine to reveal what Vonnegut feels are the ethical causes

of Hiroshima. Not all of them are related to science. Zenophobia, nationalism, elitism,

and religious determinism are also attacked. But the tool for the world‟s destruction is

produced by science.

The criticism is concentrated on Felix Hoennikker and the General Forge and

Foundry Company, where he worked in the Research Laboratory. The three points

Vonnegut‟s novel makes that are discussed in this paper are:

1. Science has set itself up as a mystery beyond the capacity of most human

understanding. It has created a sense of false consciousness so normal people do not

believe they are capable of judging science.

2. Science sees itself as producing knowledge or pure research, which is disassociated

from any consequences. Related to this is the idea that scientists are involved in the

pure search for knowledge so they are disconnected from life and humanity.

3. Science has become a new religion and scientists have become saints. Therefore

they are above criticism and have assumed a paternalistic role.

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Science is a great mystery of which most people know nothing. When Jonah, the

fictional writer of Cat’s Cradle, visits the General Forge and Foundry Company to

interview its director about Felix Hoenikker, he meets the secretary of one of the

research scientists.

“Ech,” gurgled Miss Pefko emptily. “I take dictation from Dr. Horvath and it‟s just

like a foreign language. I don‟t think I‟d understand—even if I was to go to college. And

here he‟s maybe talking about something that‟s going to turn everything upside-down

and inside-out like the atom bomb.” (Vonnegut,1998)

“When I used to come home from school Mother used to ask me what happened

that day, and I‟d tell her,” said Miss Pefko. “Now I come home from work and she asks

me that same question and all I can say is—“ Miss Pefko shook her head and let her

crimson lips flap slackly—“I dunno, I dunno, I dunno.” (Vonnegut,1998)

To Miss Pefko and most of the non-researchers at the company, science has an

unknowable, unexplainable quality. They do not understand what they are typing or

transcribing. They feel as if they have false consciousness about the world and

therefore are not able to make ethical judgments about science.

Miss Pefko refers to a science display as magic, which with its bells and smoke

and bubbling liquids seems to be its intention. When Papa Monzano is dying he tells

Jonah that “science is magic that works” (Vonnegut, 1998, p.218). When Asa Breed

scolds Miss Pefko for calling the display magic, he says, “…we don‟t want to mystify.

Give us credit for that.” (Vonnegut) Vonnegut is, of course, showing us that science

does want to mystify.

Magic mystifies. It is the word we use for phenomena we cannot explain, when

we are unable to understand reality.

And Ada Breed expects the non-scientist to not understand. The Girl Pool, the

secretaries who work in the basement and listen “to the faceless voices of scientists on

Dictaphone records--records brought in by mail girls” (Vonnegut,1998, p.38) come in to

Kurt Vonnegut‟s Novel Cat’s Cradle: Science Fiction, Thought, and Ethics

261

sing Christmas carols and Dr. Breed remarks, “They serve science too…even though

they may not understand a word of it.” (Vonnegut)

In an earlier episode in the novel, Jonah has been in a bar. The bartender

mentions that he read that science had discovered “the basic secret of life.” Science

uncovers secrets, but for most people the scientists seem to keep their secrets well.

The bartender finally remembers what the secret to life was in the article, “protein.” He

takes science‟s ridiculous claim at face value, not questioning whether science can

really answer the philosophical question of the secret of life. He accepts that the secret

of life is protein. By the way, if you look up on the Internet today for the secret of life and

DNA, you will find 83 pages of entries that refer to DNA as the secret of life.

But science as it is practiced at the Research Laboratory of General Forge and

Foundry is also disconnected from human experience. Asa Breed becomes furious

when he feels that Jonah‟s questions have insinuated that “scientists are heartless,

conscienceless, narrow boobies, indifferent to the fate of the rest of the human race, or

maybe not really members of the human race at all” (Vonnegut, 1998, p.39). Jonah

points out that this is exactly the description he has received from Felix Hoenikker‟s son

Newton.

In defense of Felix Hoenikker, Asa Breed explains what “pure research” is

(Vonnegut,1998, p.40). “When most other companies brag about their research they‟re

talking about industrial hack technicians who wear white coats, work out of

cookbooks,…”(Vonnegut, p.41). Breed goes on to explain that “Here, and shockingly

few other places in this country, men are paid to increase knowledge, to work to no end

but that.”

Of course, when questioned why a company would want to spend so much

money to create knowledge, he tells Jonah that it “is the most valuable commodity on

earth. The more truth we have to work with, the richer we

become.”(Vonnegut,1998) There are two ironies here. The first is that a pursuit of

knowledge is really a pursuit of money. The second is that the atomic bomb was

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produced in part by the pure research, knowledge, and increased truth. But the illusion

that the research is pure, cut off from humanity, focused on knowledge only, supposedly

removes it from the sphere of ethics.

Earlier in the bar, the bartender tells Jonah about the day that the bomb was

dropped on Hiroshima. Asa Breed‟s son came into the bar. “Another guy came in, and

he said he was quitting his job at the Research Laboratory; said anything a scientist

worked on was sure to wind up as a weapon, one way or another. Said he didn‟t want to

help politicians with their fugging wars anymore” (Vonnegut,1998, p.26). There is an

ethical decision that is possible for someone who is able to see the connection between

this “pure research” and “new knowledge” and the human consequences. Knowledge is

a human product and therefore has human implications. It is never pure knowledge.

Vonnegut shows us how carefully science hides its fiction.

Felix Hoenikker does not connect his discovery of knowledge to its effects on

humanity. Vonnegut compares Felix Hoenikker parental obligations as father of the

atom bomb with his behavior to his own children. Newt tells us that on the day that the

nuclear bomb was dropped on Hiroshima. Father “tried to play with me. Not only had he

never played with me before; he had hardly ever even spoken to me” (Vonnegut, 1998,

p. 12).

It is Newt Hoenikker who tells us that his father “was one of the best-protected

people human beings who ever lived. People couldn‟t get at him because he just wasn‟t

interested in people. I remember one time, about a year before he died, I tried to get

him to tell me something about my mother. He couldn‟t remember a thing about

her” (Vonnegut,1998, p. 14). As Newt said in one of his letters, “People weren‟t his

specialty” (Vonnegut, p. 17).

Felix Hoenikker‟s lack of involvement with others, or his lack of interest in what

the philosopher Harry G. Frankfurt defines as ethics “ordering relationships with

others,” leads him to a complete lack of any ethical considerations for his actions. He is

incapable of seeing the “contrast between right and wrong, and with the grounds and

Kurt Vonnegut‟s Novel Cat’s Cradle: Science Fiction, Thought, and Ethics

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limits of moral obligation.” Unlike Asa Breed‟s son, Felix Hoenikker does not connect

his actions with the bombing of Hiroshima. When he watches as they “first tested a

bomb out at Alamogordo” another scientist said, „Science has now known sin.‟”

Hoenikker replies, “What is sin?‟” (Vonnegut,1998, p. 17)

When Frank Hoenikker convinces Jonah to replace him as the president to be,

Jonah realizes that he is following in Felix Hoenikker‟s footsteps.

“And I realized with chagrin that my agreeing to be boss had freed Frank

to do what he wanted to do more than anything else, to do what his father had

done: to receive honors and creature comforts while escaping human

responsibilities. He was accomplishing this by going down a spiritual oubliette.”

(Vonnegut,1998, p. 225)

This escape from human responsibility is what Vonnegut sees as unethical in science‟s

attempt to disassociate itself from its consequences.

Vonnegut also sees science‟s role as the new religion as an obstacle to ethical

action. Felix Hoenikker is treated as a god. When asked by Jonas if he had been

Hoenikker‟s supervisor, Asa Breed answers, “If I actually supervised Felix, then I‟m

ready now to take charge of volcanoes, the tides, and the migrations of birds and

lemmings. The man was a force of nature no mortal could possibly control” (Vonnegut,

1998, p. 21). Asa Breed sees Felix Hoenikker as superhuman. He is beyond the control

of mortals. There are similar reactions to him by his daughter. Angela when she

screams at Newt that their father “is one of the greatest men who ever lived. He won the

war today! Do you realize that?...” (Vonnegut, p. 16).

Vonnegut emphasizes Hoenikker‟s apotheosis when Jonas visits his laboratory.

A purple cord had been stretched across the doorway, and a brass plate on the

wall explained why the room was sacred:

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“IN THIS ROOM, DR. FELIX HOENIKKER, NOBEL LAUREATE IN

PHYSICS, SPENT THE LAST TWENTY-EIGHT YEARS OF HIS LIFE. “WHERE

HE WAS, THERE WAS THE FRONTIER OF KNOWLEDGE.” THE

IMPORTANCE OF THIS ONE MAN IN THE HISTORY OF MANKIND IS

INCALCULABLE.” (Vonnegut, 1998, p.56)

The irony of the final statement on the plaque is yet to be realized, since his invention of

ice-nine will mean the total destruction of earth.

A whole vocabulary related to holiness is connected with Felix Hoenikker:

“sacred” (Vonnegut, 1998, p. 56), “unknowable” (p. 34), “force no mortal could control

(p. 21), and “truth” (p. 34). Even one of Hoenikker‟s detractors, Asa Breed‟s brother

Marvin Breed, who makes and sells tombstones, says, “The little Dutch son of a bitch

may have been a modern holy man…” (p. 69). Felix Hoenikker has the authority of God

so he is not accountable. As he is dying, Papa Monzano tells Jonah, who has just been

named president of San Lorenzo, to teach the people science. He says, “Science is

magic that works” (p. 218). The statement both emphasizes the common feeling that

science is miraculous and holy, and that it is incomprehensible.

As Simon Blackburn (2001) stated about religion‟s threat to ethics, “We have

God‟s authority for dominating nature, or for regarding them—others different from

ourselves—as inferior, or even criminal” (p.18). Science as the new religion is above

condemnation. When Breed is explaining to Jonas the history of Ilium, he mentions the

hanging of a man who had killed twenty-six people and marvels at how the man had no

sense of guilt. The unstated irony is that the atomic bomb at Hiroshima killed 100,000

people and Asa Breed himself has no sense of guilt.

Towards the end of the novel Vonnegut shows us in a gruesome manner how a

sense of scientific superiority leads to a sense of God-like entitlement. Jonah writes:

I recalled a thing I had read about the aboriginal Tasmanians, habitually

naked persons who, when encountered by white men in the seventeenth century

were strangers to agriculture, animal husbandry, architecture of any sort, and

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265

possibly even fire. They were so contemptible in the eyes of the white men, by

reason of their ignorance, that they were hunted for sport by the first settlers…”

(Vonnegut, 1998, p.282).

Just as Blackburn (2001) pointed out about religion, scientific knowledge, even in

its crudest form, allows us to regard “them—others different from ourselves—as inferior,

or even criminal.”

Of course, Vonnegut‟s novel is ridiculing the idea that science has anything holy

about it. Hoenikker is an asocial, irresponsible, immoral human being. He abuses and

exploits his own children He is responsible for putting the means for the destruction of

the world in the hands of children. Jonas towards the end of the novel has this thought.

“What hope can there be for mankind,” I thought, “when there are such men as Felix

Hoenikker to give such playthings as ice-nine to such short-sighted children as almost

all men and women are?” (Vonnegut, 1998, p. 245)

Vonnegut‟s novel is not so simplistic as to put all of the blame on science.

Nationalism, elitism, capitalism, and religion are given blame for their inability to create

what Blackburn calls an ethical climate. Ethics is not rules, but as Blackburn points out

“Thinking that will itself be a something that affects the way we live our

lives” (Vonnegut,1998, p. 3)

But Vonnegut‟s conclusions concerning science are that by thinking of it as

inscrutable, or as pure knowledge unconnected to human reality, or as our new religion,

we surrender to its authority and cannot make ethical evaluations that lead to action.

What we should have learned in the novel was the meaning of the preface, “Live

by the foma* that make you brave and kind and healthy and happy.” In other words, we

may not be capable of knowing what the truth is, but we are able to make choices about

what we will believe and those choices, if they are wise, can make us “brave and kind

and healthy and happy.”

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266

In reference to Gaia, the belief that the earth functions as a self-regulating entity

that human can bring into dangerous imbalance and to which they have an obligation to

protect, may be the type of foma that will make us “brave and kind and happy and

healthy,” as opposed to the idea that science is pure holy knowledge unconnected to

humanity or to the non-human earth.

References

Blackburn, Simon. (2001). Being Good: A short Introduction to Ethics. Oxford: Oxford

UP, UK.

Frankfurt, Harry G. (1988). The Importance of What We Care About. Cambridge:

Cambridge UP, UK.

Richardson, Jack. (1970) “Easy Writer.” New York Review of Books., Electronic

Archives.

Vonnegut, Kurt. (1998). Cat’s Cradle. New York: Dell P.,

Weinberg, Steven. (2007) “The Revolution that Didn‟t Happen.”

www.astro.uni-bonn.de/~willerd/weinberg.html,

Wolcott, James. (1979)“Mod Apostle.” New York Review of Books. Electronic Archives.

Wood, Michael. (1973) “Dancing in the Dark.” New York Review of Books. Electronic

Archives.

Citación de este artículo: Wekander Voigt, M. (2009). Kurt Vonnegut‟s Novel Cat’s Cradle: Science Fiction,

Thought, and Ethics Revista Umbral, 1, 254-266. Disponible en http://ojs.uprrp.edu/index.php/umbral/article/download/30/18

Producción y Recursos en Internet: Producción de Umbral, Facultad de Estudios Generales, Universidad de Puerto Rico,

Río Piedras. Disponible en http://umbral.uprrp.edu/revista